First of all my most Anticipated game of all time: Guild Wars 2. The Guild Wars original game is what first bought in gently into the wide world of MMO playing and the second instalment promises to revolutionise the way MMO's are played. So how and why is it planning on doing this? Well the MMO market has become somewhat stale in recent years with wave after wave of games trying to cash-in becoming World of Warcraft clones. Guild Wars 2 doesn't imitate, from what demo's I have seen and how fluid the game looks I predict that it will be the new trend setter in years to come. So, why change what isn't 'broken', simple answer it is broken. We can see by the falling numbers of WoW players that people are becoming bored with what's out there, and whilst the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic calls to remedy that I don't believe that it will due to the sheer number of mechanics and styles it has copied stolen from existing franchises. Whilst not everything in GW2 will be completely new, there is enough there to distinguish itself more from existing games than any other MMO has to date.
Space Marine. I have recently started collecting Warhammer 40k once more, in no small part to my interest in the Dawn of War series and the hype built around this game. Space Marine is going to be an instant classic for me. I love the Action Adventure genre, and to have one based around one of my favourite brands/aesthetics/lore is just fantastic. Nothing about this game looks revolutionary, nothing too original, but it looks beautiful and master-crafted, something with a large amount of polish and shine to it. Shine is very important to an Action Adventure game as elements such as combat and play should be highly tuned to keep the player engaged and wanting more. I cannot wait to smash in some Ork faces at the expo.
One/Two words: FireFall. I have always wanted a large scale shooter game in a persistent world, and if all is to be believed then FireFall may well deliver. Not that long ago Realtime Worlds put out APB, it failed hard, but not because the game was poor. It is still not really certain what happened to cause the collapse of the game but that isn't really the issue, the game was for all intents and purposes a very large scale shooter (80+ players per district). This worked pretty well given the size of the map and the worlds when populated did feel like living breathing city environments, never a dull moment. Will FireFall be able to re-create this type of game? Will it really be persistent and how big? The trailers look amazing, if you haven't seen them then check them out as it makes the game look phenomenal, which whilst I am really hoping it will be I will take my default cynical position and say the game will be good, but not enough to win popularity comparable the vast population of games like WoW and CoD.
Diablo 3. Well I can't say a huge amount on this game as not a great deal has been announced but from what I read it will be rather similar to Torchlight, which was an amazing game. With the recent announcements of the real currency marketplace and always on DRM, it has caused some controversy. My personal opinion actually lies directly in line with Blizzard on this one, my first thought about DRM was that it was for keeping online content balanced and hack-free, which is exactly what it does. The side-effect is that single player still requires internet, as someone who has a 90-strong Steam game collection this doesn't bother me. Try Steam Offline mode then you'll see why.
End of Nations. Well I don't know a huge amount about this game, nor how it plans to execute it's 'MMORTS' classification. If a game such as this is based around instanced gameplay with progression as a main element, then I wouldn't consider it an MMO. Massively Multiplayer Online games for me is all about the persistent worlds, yes you may have games of 50 players but even counterstrike had matches of up to 64 players does that mean it is an MMO?
Which brings me nicely to my last game Counter Strike: Global Offensive. No news on this other than its name and a rather bland concept image as a stand-in logo. Early reports suggest the game will be all about competitive play. As a person who thoroughly enjoyed the days of 1.6 and CSS I can safely say that this game will provide that and probably a very beautiful game too. Hopefully this will be the new standard of play for competitive shooters, much in the same way that Starcraft 2 is with Strategy.
I also look forward to many other game being shown at the Eurogamer Expo and intend to play almost all of them. September through November will be good months for gaming. Very very good months.
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